Decameron Reloaded. That the Fun begin (with Bears and Ladies in Canada)

I’ve always found Giovanni Boccaccio‘s Decameron philosophically inspiring. Incidentally, this masterpiece works also as a signal, possibly, that at the end of the Middle Ages some freer sexual mores were surfacing back from antiquity.

Following this boccaccescaispirazione I have given a sudden twist to a peaceful conversation with dear-to-me blog buds and made a ‘licentious’ story out of it (after asking them for permission.)

The original conversation is basically untouched.

Only from the ‘Amanda, Drinks and Bears’ section onward things get ehm weird a bit (due to MoR’s fancy only, not my buds’, please bear in mind.)

Licentious here means not lascivious but it refers to the original Latin meaning of licentia, ie ‘behaviour with some freedom’.

So here’s the story, at the end of which you will read an invitation from MoR.

[Minors are requested not to read any further]

In The Solitude of a Canadian Cottage …

Three blogger buds, Giulia, Paul and Giorgio (MoR,) finally decide to really meet (in their minds) and to spend their New Year’s eve in an unpretentious cottage in Canada. After placid conversation and toasting Amanda & a family of polar bears join the party.

It is to be said that it is exceptional, these kind of bears venturing South like that in desperate search for food. But let us not digress since after the bears arrive things get a bit out of hand.

The cottage is cosy and warm though isolated up North. It had been previously inhabited by Latin-Americans. The outside temperature is -20° C ( or -4 F). The three friends are conversing placidly in front of a fireplace.

Giulia. Yes Paul, Happy New Year to us. Thanks for a wonderful friendship.

Paul. Blogging is a strange thing. In a way it replaces the letter writing of yesteryears; however those letters were exchanged between two individuals, a blog is a wide open public thing. Yet on short order there develops a relationship between bloggers quite akin to genuine friendship, and international to boot.
When I began blogging last spring little did I figure that I would develop a link with a NYorker, a Roman and a Laval guy that I never met, and probably never will meet. Still I have the impression that I know them and can be quite close to them…despite some differences whether political, cultural or social.
Yes Giulia, it is wonderful.
Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to the dear Canadian sage plus witty companion of so many discussions.
Happy New Year to our generous Giulia sharing her warmth and intelligence with so many of us.
And Happy New Year to the exuberant, unpredictable Commish, the dear Laval brat!

[They toast, also to absent Commish’s health]

Paul. MoR, Glad you enjoyed Sicily and escaped Etna’s wrath.

Retired Soldier to Retired Soldier

Giorgio. I heard in fact some tremblement de terre but had faith the Sicilian gods would spare the only person who basically hasn’t forgotten them (outside Sicily.)

Paul. I’m currently reading a book titled Le Christ Païen by Tom Harpur. It traces the parallels between Christian and Pagan beliefs. Astonishing.

Giorgio. I have checked in the French wiki. Donc, un prêtre anglican qui thinks l’existence de Jésus n’est pas evident. Merci. Could be useful. In Sicily I have visited Catania and most of all Siracusa. Toutes les deux, hanno la loro santa patrona, che è come una dea, like a goddess. The devotion people have for these two saints is beyond imagination. Catania has Sant’Agata, Syracuse Santa Lucia, deity of light also for the Northern Europeans, being so sun-starved and all. I have collected stuff for 20 posts but I’ll make 2 out of it, lest I lose all my readers.

Giulia, Paul, I’m getting at ease with my retirement, and also have to thank my blog for it, but most of all, the people I have met.

Paul. Retirement is a great period for doing all we always wanted to but never could do. It is not the end of our productive life, it’s the beginning of another kind of productivity and creativity, providing we do not let go.
Onward retired soldiers.

Giulia. Good to see you are promoting laughter. Add a strong drink now and then, wonderful meals as often as one can, and life is as good as it can be when our wings are tired, our resources limited, and, our prospects for adventure, stuff we just dream about.

Good to see also that the weather is not getting you down, Paul.

Canadian Yearly Cycle

Paul. Weather wise we Canadians are tough hombres. You see it keeps our hoping capacity at it’s peak all year round. In winter we hope for spring’s balmy weather, then we wait for summer and it’s blissful farniente, while sweating away we hope for autumn foliage and it’s splendours followed by hoping winter will not be too harsh, and the cycle resumes.
Of course, in winter hot toddy and Rhum keep us happy, in summer a nice cold beer does it and all year round good wine and food are staples of a happy Canuck’s life.
It is said we are boring…and I am happy with that.

Giorgio. Weather wise Canadians: nice concept and depiction of the yearly psychological cycle, one of your gems, Paul. Canuck? You guys teach me so many words! And yes, I’d love more cold weather to be able to drink A LOT MORE than I can in Rome.

Amanda, Drinks and Bears

Amanda [suddenly knocking at the window from outside]. Yikes on all levels! Double yikes!

Paul. [He turns around and smiles at Amanda, but doesn’t notice the bears and especially Amanda being an object of curiosity to them.] Alcohol and cold do not mix well. You, briefly, feel a bit warmer after a stiff shot of Scotch or Gin, but it soon vanishes and you feel even colder…so another shot, when you have had one too many you feel sleepy…and you freeze to death if outside and alone.
Besides, cold slows your metabolism. Better stay in Rome, you’ll live longer.

Giorgio. I had heard about this alcohol thing [weird shrieks from outside. Nobody notices]. Paul, this conversation, it is so beautiful. It is good in this moment I’m about to change my life.

[They then pass to explore the differences between Scotch and Jamaican Rhum, with no objection to salt-rimmed margarita glasses. They sip this and that. Conversation quietly unfolds.]

Ψ

Amanda is still outside. She desperately tries to knock at the window again, but the bears don’t let her. They grab her merrily and start dancing the Ring a Ring o’ Roses with her.

Other shrieks (plus groans) finally catch the attention of the people within who, looking out the window, much to their surprise realise Amanda is now actually fighting against the bears. She is so brave that the two men feel inclined to go back to their alcohol experiments.

NO. They have to rise up (Giulia’s unwavering idea) and exit the cottage with guns and sleeping bullets in them (Paul’s idea) just to make the darn bears fall asleep a bit.

After the shooting occurs not without difficulty they are though afraid the poor bears would die in the cold so dead asleep and fluffy they are. They so drag them into the house and up to the fireplace (MoR’s idea, he’s so proud to say.)

Now the group is composed of Giulia, Amanda, Paul, Giorgio and the bears, who by the way wake up.

Ψ

“They first wanted to eat us up – Paul and Giorgio later told the people in a pub close by (1200 mi.) – but then they realised we are good people, so they accepted our meat and, the all of us, we chanted, we talked and drank and we all had lovely conversation together.” The people in the pub were now staring at them.

“Oh we got high (we were already.) Oh we got soo high. And we made the ladies happy. And after the ladies the bears. And the bears made the ladies happy, and a big party began where much joy was exchanged during the entire night.”

Ψ

The bears in the end were cheerful but also a bit surprised. They hadn’t thought about this new form of entertainment. So the voice spread among their population and a big migration southward began, not entirely unnoticed by satellites and TV.

Ψ

The Canadians, both the men and the women, were starting to feel awkward.

Now the invitation.

MoR is inviting willing readers
to bring in a comment to this post
with his/her original ‘licentious’story to share, for some innocent fun.

You can also contribute anonymously. The stories, also very short (1-2-3 liners) and not necessarily in the style of Boccaccio will be accepted (in English or French, Italian and German) only if compliant with the following rules:

Well, I was afraid it would be rude for a person who mostly lurks here to send a submission, but now that I have read your perplexed post about Anglo-Saxons and sex, remarking that you received mainly indignation and porn, I will overcome my shyness and fire away with the story that came to me when I read this post. Mind you I am the usual American Salad of Irish and Scandihoovian and Scots, scarcely and Angle or a Sax to be found.

Madam Sled is put in mind of her undergraduate years (when Boccaccio received many readings and rereadings) and of a bit of a Peronella story – certainly one of the characters was a bit filostrato. The Sled’s college campus was, at least in the 1970s, bucolic, and featured an Anglican chapel dedicated to the Holy Innocents, with an excellent pipe organ. Thither she went one night in the company of a shy but earnest history major, deeply handicapped in his romantic ambitions by a damnable resemblance to the then President of the United States Richard Nixon.

Being too soft-hearted for her own good, Sled endeavored to make good the slights which he had suffered from other ladies in that earnest institution of learning, piqued by the mild blasphemy of the setting and the haunting music issuing from the chapel’s organ loft. Alas! Had he resembled the Kennedy brothers, he could not have been more of an amorous disaster! Either the lateness of the hour or his own boredom with his uninspired performance sent the hapless youth into a midnight stupor, and vexed, Madam Sled ascended the steps to the loft to see who was playing. A comely lad from the music school, burning with creative passion! Then and there he declared her a vision summoned by his chords (a bit over the top, since it was midwinter and she was attired in slightly disordered woollens layered with long underwear) and tossed her upon the couch at the back of the loft; their vigorous pedal action presently dislodging a glass and bottle with which he had been refreshing himself while practicing, and sending the glass in a shower of fragments down the shaft of the C-below-middle-C pipe of the organ. Hearing her original companion cease snoring in the pew below and stir, Madam Sled bade the talented organist a hasty farewell, sped down from the loft with the last of the bottle (it was a quite horrible Sangria blended by the Messrs. Gallo) and offered to share the final sip, saying it was the organist’s desire to share with his listeners.

Oh my god Madame Sled, you are a revelation! [I waited a bit since I needed some quiet to read well]

The Sled’s college campus was, at least in the 1970s, bucolic, and featured an Anglican chapel dedicated to the Holy Innocents

Oh the mild blasphemy of the setting (as you said). I too was ‘piqued’ and held my breath in expectation, I’ll confess.

Thither she went one night in the company of a shy but earnest history major, deeply handicapped in his romantic ambitions by a damnable resemblance to the then President of the United States Richard Nixon.

Ah ah ah, this really sent me rolling on the floor laughing!

A comely lad from the music school, burning with creative passion …

Boccaccesco, without a doubt.

… tossed her upon the couch at the back of the loft; their vigorous pedal action presently dislodging a glass and bottle … and sending the glass in a shower of fragments down the shaft …

Well well, so darn evocative I could fantasize a lot on that, but afraid to further compromise my reputation 😉

The study of music, history and literature are all enlarging.

Ah, cruel lass! Such cherry on the pie – you know how to tease, sweet Madame Slep.

My hat’s off to Paul and Ms.Sled – quite good material, and definitely in the proper mode! My French is also not quite up to snuff, but without consulting a dictionary, I think I got 70% of the action, and 100% of the intent in Paul’s piece.

I wish I could send Sled’s piece to an old college friend of mine (we’ve lost touch) who was a classics scholar and an organist. The puns and jokes he made about his “instrument…” But he was, and is, a wonderful performer and composer, and I used to enjoy sitting in the monstrous university chapel hearing him at midnight, a favorite pastime for us, his friends, after heavy indulgence in the usual collegiate activities. Thanks for the story and for recalling those memories to me.

“…their vigorous pedal action presently dislodging a glass and bottle with which he had been refreshing himself while practicing, and sending the glass in a shower of fragments down the shaft of the C-below-middle-C pipe of the organ.”

I like this list, though naturally some of the items leave me cold. Edward Norton? Well, the heart has its reasons…

Makes me wonder what “sexy” means in the first place. Casanova said that the sexiest part of a woman was her mind. In the end, it’s all there, right?

Just a note about No. 8: Amazing to me that this piece was put in a church. I always knew that if I had not been born a Jew and if I were not an atheist, I’d be a Catholic. Better than the Hindu Khajuraho – that place is too explicit. We sensitive, artistic types like a little subtlety and distraction…

I’m tempted to start making my own list, but I fear I’d give too much away…

Sadly, I often find things too late to properly comment. Yet, I cannot help myself.

Eleonora’s list is a fine, healthy, mixture of the sensual and raw animal sexuality. Like others, some of the things puzzle me. Perhaps because we have different perceptions what they are. Burlesque (#4) for example, is mostly slapstick comedy to me. Bad manners at the table (#20) equates to sloppiness or piggishness.

And I would have added “goosebumps on soft skin” to the list. And dropped the “broad, tanned, muscular male shoulders” and her “ex-lover Marco”, among other masculine items.

There are, however, female lions and all Big Cats are very sensual in their movements.

Loved your comment. It is smart, sincere. I don’t care about when people comment Douglas. I often comment on people’s posts that are years old, provided I find something in them that interests me in some way.

Received this from another bad bad schoolmate of mine. Don’t think he wrote it, it’s likely a chain letter, a bit hard-core at times (only a few words) but very funny, so I published it, also out of sentimentality for our school days (and *ways*.)
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